


Asmund, Einherji of Asgard

by Maker_of_Rune_Vests



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Warning: brief suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 15:03:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20342092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maker_of_Rune_Vests/pseuds/Maker_of_Rune_Vests
Summary: People on Tumblr realized that several of the Einherjar in the Thor movies were one Einherji, so I wrote a story about him.





	Asmund, Einherji of Asgard

**Author's Note:**

> The posts that inspired this:
> 
> https://makerofrunevests.tumblr.com/post/187120901007/magicmastered-motherhela-motherhela-the
> 
> https://makerofrunevests.tumblr.com/post/187120883277/magicmastered-lokis-tiny-teacup
> 
> I think I saw another post where someone said that the Einherji about whom these posts are is one Einherji, not two, but I do not know how to find it.

I am Asmund, Einherji of Asgard. I am a traitor, and nobody save myself and the dead prince for whom I committed treason know. 

When I met him I was a loyal subject of Odin Borson, and the Lord Loki was an infant. 

“Asmund.” I turned towards the Allfather and barely hid my stupefaction at what he held: a baby. It was asleep, face buried against the Allfather’s chest, and I could see a minuscule pink ear.

“Yes, my lord?” I said, pulling my eyes away from the infant to look my king in his bloody face. He had lost an eye a few hours earlier, and had not bandaged the socket. I suspect that he wished to emphasize his fortitude by showing us not only that he could lead with a freshly lost eye but also that he cares not if the icy air of Jotunheim eddied in its socket.

“This is Loki Odinson,” the Allfather said. “You will keep him safe from now until we return to Asgard, and you will forget that you have seen him in this realm.” 

He held out the baby to me, and I took him, mumbling a stunned, “Yes, my lord,” as he strode away to coordinate our victorious withdrawal from Jotunheim. 

The baby was bulkily wrapped in some other Einherji’s golden cape, and his eyes were fluttering open. “Greetings, my lord,” I said, making my voice very gentle. I grew up with a younger brother; and I had wed four months before the war began, and my wife and I were trying to become a mother and father. And though I have slain many Jotuns, I slew them merely because my king chose to war against them. This infant I would have been glad to protect, even had Odin not ordered me to do so. 

The Lord Loki burst into tears, and I swayed him back and forth, murmuring soothing things. My steel armor couldn’t be comfortable for a baby to be against, I realized. I held him in one arm and pulled my cape forward over my shoulder to cover my breastplate, and cradled him against that.

A quarter of an hour later, he was still crying. Perhaps it was because warriors were shouting and marching, perhaps it was because there were distant screams, perhaps because the wind was wuthering around icy stone pinnacles, but I remembered my little brother, when he was this young and much plumper, and I knew that if he had been crying my mother would have fed him. “I’m sorry, little one. Try to sleep again, sleep until we’re home, and they will feed you there….” He did not stop crying, but he buried his wet face against my chest as he had against the Allfather’s. I wished, for the first and last time in my life, that I were a magician and could conjure up a bottle of milk. But all I could do was stroke his almost bald little head with my gloved hand, and shiver, and wait for the Lord Odin to lead us home.

Loki wailed from the base of the Bifrost to the Observatory, and then Odin took him and thanked me, and I did not see the baby for weeks. When I did, he and the Lord Thor were lying on a blanket in the gardens, and the Lady Frigga was sitting and playing peek-a-boo with them. 

Less than a century later, I became a leader of the Einherjar. The first time the Lord Loki led troops, in Vanaheim, I happened to be his second-in-command. I thought well of him; he terminated the revolution quickly, treated the Einherjar as irreplaceable, executed only the Vanir leaders and only after ensuring that they  _ were _ in fact the leaders, and treated me with courtesy. He asked after my wife and children--I knew not that he knew my name before that, let alone that I had a wife and daughters. I expressed to him that I would be glad to serve under him again, and he said I had led well; and after that, on the rare times when he led a military action without the Lord Thor, he would choose me to second him. I mourned when he was believed dead; one always mourns a good leader, and he had treated me with more respect than was conventional. 

I was in charge of those who guarded him before his trial. The first time I saw him he had a muzzle on; I know not who put it there. Midgardians, I assume.I removed it; he thanked me, remembered my name, and then did not speak to me for weeks. Or to anyone else, so far as I saw, save for whomever he screamed at in his dreams. I have seen those who lost wars. I have guarded men who were condemned to die. He conducted himself like neither. He conducted himself as one who had been captured and tortured, and I came to believe he had been so. 

He was imprisoned for life, and I did not see him again during his imprisonment, until the end of it. I compassionated him. I knew that had one of my men done wrong after torture, I would not have punished him as I would had he done it in sanity. When two Einherjar told me they had seen the Lady Frigga visiting him, I did not alert the Allfather.

The Dark Elves attacked Asgard, and dozens of my Einherjar died. The Lady Frigga was slain as well. The Allfather seemed careless that his guards had been killed, and careless whether the Lord Loki heard of his mother’s death. It was primarily for the former that I ceased to feel loyalty to him, but I disliked the latter as well. I could not make the Allfather comprehend that each of my Einherjar who died was worth mourning and worth more than fodder for the weapons of a foe his father had incense, but I could influence him to send me to tell the Lord Loki his mother had died.

I could see him reading in his cell as I walked towards it, my helmet in the crook of my arm. I did not try to break the news; I simply told him what had taken place, waited until he nodded (it was like a statue nodding, he had become so still), and walked away. Before I left the dungeons, I heard a crashing as if a hurricane were in his cell. I was not surprised. Nor was I surprised when he escaped with the Lord Thor to avenge the Allmother. After the Lord Heimdall announced his death to the Allfather, I volunteered to fly to Svartalfheim and seek his body. 

I found him half-buried in sand, his face an uncanny grey color. The blood coming from his wound wet my hand when I checked if he had a heartbeat. His eyes flew open at the instant I realized that his heart was beating. “Brother--” He stopped short, seeing me. 

After an instant, I remembered how to move and ripped the bandages I always carried out of their pouch. “Is it a deep wound or is it impalement, my lord?” 

Inaudibly, he laughed. “Don’t, Asmund. Wait a few...few moments. What will it change if you bring back a slightly fresher corpse than Odin expects?”

I shook my head. “Is it impalement, my lord?”

He pressed his lips together, staring at me in determined silence. There were dried tears at the corners of his eyes, dried blood on the hand he was weakly trying to raise and wave me off. I thought he would survive if I bandaged him. I was positive that Odin would imprison or execute him. I could not bear to bring about his doom, not on the day that dozens of the Einherjar we had led well together had fallen, not to please the Allfather. 

“I’ll let you go, my lord.” I pledged. “I give you my word. I’ll help you escape, should you need help.”

Thus I became a traitor. 

He had begun to heal. I could do no surgery, but I could clean the wounds and put pressure on them, and I did; and he cast a few spells on himself. And then he lay silently, letting the healing continue, and I sat on the sand nearby, wondering if I was mad and wondering how I could take my wife and children with me. I could not stay in Asgard after letting him go. 

“Heimdall is not watching us,” Loki said, his voice stronger. “I mean to return to Asgard as you. You will be invisible, and shall hide in the ship until I have...conversed...with Odin. I will then reward you by making you the King of Asgard’s esteemed personal guard.” He clenched his teeth and forced himself to sit up and then stand, and I scrambled to my feet.

“My lord, do you mean to take the throne?” I whispered. What had I done? What was I doing? 

“I do.” He pressed his palm against his wound for an instant, and then walked towards the ship, as straight as a column. Green light glowed around me; in retrospect, I think he made me invisible. I hurried to catch up with him. “My lord, do you mean to kill the Allfather?” I asked urgently, as more green light bounded him. I saw a gold cape appear, and then he turned toward me, looking absolutely like me. 

“I do not, good Asmund. You have my word.” I believed him, because he did not try to kill me, and because he had been a trustworthy leader. I made no attempt, then or later, to undo my treason.

I do not regret my treason, here in Norway eight years after the Sacking of Asgard and four years after the Lord Loki was taken to Valhalla, but I consider it. I was loyal to a lord who led me and my Einherjar heedfully, rather than to the Allfather who reckoned us weapon fodder. Was that treason?

I am Asmund, Einherji of Asgard, and I know not if I am a traitor. 


End file.
